Figuring Out the Stuff Between the Beginning and the End

Dude Suite

I had a lot of roommates in college. Freshman year saw the awkward random placement. I was paired with a guy that I had nothing in common with, other than the fact that we were both freshmen. That lasted one semester. Then I was moved into a room with a senior who had nothing with him. Our room was pretty empty, except for the pathetic furniture the college provided us that year.

Sophomore year was a little different. I had gotten to know some people and was able to choose a roommate. Really, I didn’t choose. I was kind of chosen. Phillip asked me if I’d want to room with him, and I said sure. After the awkwardness that was freshman year, anything had to be better. At least I knew this guy. To our surprise, when the semester started, we were placed in a three person room with a third roommate. Neither of us knew Ronchez very well, but we got to know him, and it turned out to be a pretty good year.

Junior year, I arranged to share a room with Dave. He had transferred in the previous year and I got to know him through BSU and the fact that we had a lot of the same classes. He was almost as big a geek as I was, so it worked out well. And then I introduced him to the girl that would eventually be his wife. I didn’t see him much after that.

Now we come to my first senior year. That’s right, I said first. I graduated in five years. But I got two degrees, so try not to judge too harshly. During the course of the junior year, Dave decided that for his senior year, he wanted to move down to a different building, the one with single rooms. This wasn’t a reflection on me. In fact, I think he wanted me to move down there and live on the other side, share the suite, as it were. But I opted out of that one.

Instead, I made a plan with three guys that had started at Bluefield that year. One was a freshman, the other two transferred in as juniors. So, for Mark, Brandon, and myself, it was our senior year. For Dereck, it was his sophomore year. The plan we made was pretty awesome, I’m not gonna lie.

The four of us were abut as good a friends as you could find at a small Baptist college. We worked it out to where the four of us would share a suite on the first floor of Rish Hall, which, at the time, was the men’s dorm. This isn’t the awesome part of the plan.

The awesome part is what we decided to do to the rooms. Instead of the standard two of us in one room and two in the other with a bathroom in the middle, we decided to move all the beds into one side of the suite and convert the other side into a living room. That’s right, we moved in couches and a big TV. Area rugs and a coffee table and a larger than the average dorm room refrigerator. Feel free to bask in the awesomeness.

Unfortunately, I only lasted for one semester. A free room opened up down the hall and I was able to get a room by myself. It wasn’t that I didn’t like living with those guys. It just turned into one of those things where I enjoyed my alone time. Living with three other guys in close quarters like that, you just don’t get alone time. Though, for a while, I did create a cave in the bottom bunk. I hung a big blanket down from Mark’s top bunk and it effectively closed off my bed from the rest of the room. It was the closest thing to an isolation chamber as I could come up with. It helped out since I usually tried to fall asleep before the other guys. This way they could still stay up with the lights on and it wouldn’t bother me.

I look back and read that and, you know, I was kind of selfish. I had an awesome time with those guys. And I had to get away to be alone. What an idiot. If I could do it over again, I’d have stayed the whole year.